Press Release, 6.04.2023

Photo: Press Centre of the Moscow City Duma

On 4 April, a round table on specially protected nature preservation areas was held in the Moscow City Duma. The round table was initiated by Sergei Mitrokhin, a Yabloko MP of the Moscow City Duma and a member of the Moscow State Duma Commission on Urban Planning, State Property and Land Use. The participants were MPs of the Moscow parliament, public and civil activists, they discussed the systemic problem of the destruction of specially protected nature preservation areas. Profile officials ignored the invitation to the discussion.

The discussion evolved around such well-known Moscow nature preservation areas as Bitsevsky and Troitsky forests, Holy Lake in Kosino-Ukhtomsky, Losinoostrovsky and Moskvoretsky parks, and Aksininsky swamp in the Floodplain Forest.

Sergei Mitrokhin, the initiator of the round table and the author of the draft law on the restoration of the institution of state environmental expertise in relation to regional specially protected natural areas, noted that specially protected nature preservation areas could be used solely for the purpose of preservation of natural complexes. According to Mitrokhin, these areas should not be subject to anthropogenic impact, which would entail unfavorable consequences for the ecosystems that have developed there.

“Beautification programmes that are not envisaged for nature preservation areas by either federal or Moscow legislation are being developed and then they are approved by officials without participation of the public, deputies of the Moscow City Duma and municipal councils. These programmes are not published even after they are approved, and in the absence of an institution of state environmental expertise, they are also exempted from assessment of their impact on the ecosystems of nature preservation areas”, Mitrokhin commented. “At the moment, there are two approaches to the problem that we would like to reflect in the paragraphs of the resolution: to demand from the Moscow Government to completely stop the implementation of beautification programmes on the territory of nature preservation areas, or only limit them.”

The round table adopted four resolutions providing for the conservation of natural heritage and creation of mechanisms for regulating interference into the ecosystem.